A New Multidimensional Approach to Measuring Precarious Employment

This article proposes a new methodology to measure precarious employment with a multidimensional approach. The adjusted multidimensional precariousness rate employed to measure job precariousness is calculated on a counting approach and exhibit several advantages, including its decomposability according to the relative contribution to total precariousness of different dimensions and sub-populations. For illustrative purposes, the methodology is applied to the Spanish case using microdata from the Encuesta de Estructura Salarial (Wage Structure Survey) and considering three precariousness dimensions of jobs (low wages, fixed-term contracts and part-time work). The evidence obtained shows that at the beginning of the economic crisis there was an increase in the incidence and intensity of precariousness for new jobs created in the Spanish economy. Moreover, obtained evidence shows that the incidence of precarious employment is particularly high in certain economic sectors and for females.     

Informal search,bad search?: the effects of job search method on wages among rural migrants in urban China

The use of informal job search method is prevalent in many countries. There is, however, no consensus in the literature on whether it actually matters for wages, and if it does, what are the underlying mechanisms. We empirically examine these issues specifically for rural migrants in urban China, a country where one of the largest domestic migration in human history has occurred over the past decades. We find that there exists a significant wage penalty for those migrant workers who have conducted their search through informal channels, despite their popularity. Our further analysis suggests two potential reasons for the wage penalty: (1) the informal job search sends a negative signal (of workers’ inability to successfully find a job in a competitive market) to potential employers, resulting in lower wages, and (2) there exists a trade-off between wages and search efficiency for quicker entry into local labor market. We also find some evidence that the informal job search may lead to low-skilled jobs with lower wages. We do not find strong evidence supporting alternative explanations.     

Measuring Precarious Employment: A Proposal for Two Indicators of Precarious Employment Based on Set-Theory and Tested with Dutch Labor Market-Data

Scholars claim that precarious employment is rising. The precariously employed earn low wages, have little job- and income security and occupy jobs that can generally be deemed low quality. These employees are at a disproportionally high risk of poverty and are at risk of detrimental psychological effects. Despite the salience of the issue, precarious employment remains an elusive concept and has proven difficult to measure directly. Instead, measurement tends to rely on non-integrated indicators and proxies, thus introducing significant issues concerning the validity of found results. This paper proposes two integrated indicators for specific aspects of precarious employment. Indicator 1 focuses on income insecurity and is constructed using wage, supplementary income and unemployment benefit entitlements. Indicator 2 focuses on job insecurity and is constructed using contract type and unemployment duration. Additionally, to check for the coexistence of job- and income insecurity at the individual level and give a more holistic picture of precarious employment, Indicators 1 and 2 are integrated. First, previous research on precarious employment and job insecurity is reviewed to bolster the indicators’ validity. Second, the indicators are constructed using an approach grounded in crisp-set theory and data from the Dutch “Organisatie Strategisch Arbeidsmartkonderzoek” labor supply panel. Finally, the indicators are tested by assessing precarious employment over time, by educational level, sector and immigrant status.     

Psychological Well-Being,Job Strain and Education Among Young Finnish Precarious Employees

This study examined the effect of precarious work (temporary and part-time present employment and unstable work history) on psychological well-being among young employees at age 31, controlling for prior mental disorders, education and job strain. The data of 1,070 women and 1,030 men was derived from the prospective unselected population-based Northern Finland 1966 Birth Cohort study. Results of univariate logistic regression models showed that among men, precarious work associated with all psychological well-being outcomes. Among women, only depressive symptoms at 31 years associated with precarious work. Among both genders, the association between precarious work and well-being outcomes diminished to a statistically non-significant level in multivariate analyses including prior mental diagnosis, education level and job strain. In the final multivariate logistic regression models, job strain and education level were the strongest factors associating with the well-being outcomes. The association between depression symptoms and precarious work was strongest in the highest educational class among men. These results emphasize the role of education and job strain in the enhancement of psychological well-being among young employees doing precarious work. The role of education seems to differ among genders, so that for women education acts as a resource also in precarious work while among highly educated men, not having a stable employment history increases the risk for depressive symptoms.     

A Multidimensional Approach to Measuring Quality of Employment (QoE) Deprivation in Six Central American Countries

This paper proposes a methodology for measuring Quality of Employment (QoE) deprivation from a multidimensional perspective in six Central American countries (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama) using a dataset specifically designed to measure employment conditions. Building on previous work on multidimensional poverty and employment indicators, the paper uses the Alkire/Foster (AF) method to construct a synthetic indicator of the QoE at an individual level. It selects four dimensions that must be considered as essential to QoE deprivation: income, job stability, job security and employment conditions. These dimensions then subdivide into several indicators, a threshold for each indicator and dimension is established before defining an overall cut-off line that allows for the calculation of composite levels of deprivation. The results generated by this indicator show that Central American countries can be divided into three distinct and robust performance groups in terms of their QoE deprivation. Overall, approximately 60% of the deprivation levels are attributable to non-income variables, such as occupational status and job tenure. The methodology used can allow policymakers to identify and focus on the most vulnerable workers in a labour market and highlights the fact that having a formal written contract is no guarantee of good job quality, particularly in the case of women.

     

Precarious employment among South Korean women: Insights from a comparison to France

Family responsibilities for women are often associated with precarious employment. This relation varies depending on whether women can reconcile family life and work or not. Based on the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study from 1998 to 2008 and on the French part of the European Community Household Panel between 1998 and 2001, a multiple correspondence analysis shows that precariousness in employment is correlated with family life and levels of education. The better conditions of work-family balance in France enable young mothers to combine family life with stable employment of good quality, which is not the case for South Korean women. The comparison of the two countries highlights the necessary reforms in favor of women’s better being.     

Happy to Help? Exploring the Factors Associated with Variations in Rates of Volunteering Across Europe

The frequency of formal volunteering varies widely across European countries, and rates of formal volunteering are especially low among Eastern European countries. Why are there such large differences in volunteering rates when it is known that volunteering is beneficial for well-being? Using data from the latest round of the European Social Survey, we test three hypotheses to explain these cross-national differences in volunteering. We ask whether people in countries with low frequencies of volunteering spend more of their time on informal volunteering activities; whether they differ on socio-demographic variables which are known to be linked to volunteering rates; or whether they show less well-being benefit from formal volunteering. Contrary to the first hypothesis, we find a positive correlation between formal and informal volunteering. We further conclude that national differences in rates of volunteering cannot be fully explained by differences in the social, psychological or cultural factors associated with volunteering nor the outcome of volunteering. It is likely that contextual factors, such as a country’s historical background or institutions, determine levels of volunteering to a large extent.     

The Impact of Deviations from Desired Hours of Work on the Life Satisfaction of Employees

We estimate an ordinal logistic multilevel model to examine the determinants of the life satisfaction of employees in Europe. Data drawn from the European social survey reveals that deviations from desired hours of work (measured as the absolute difference between the actual and preferred weekly number of hours) reduce overall life satisfaction, but the effect is smaller in countries with higher unemployment rates. We interpret this finding as evidence that in environments where anxieties about job security are high, having a job brings about a certain level of life satisfaction regardless of the gap between the actual and preferred time spent in the labor market. We also find no statistically significant difference between male and female employees with regard to the impact of the work hours mismatch. This finding suggests that the gender differences which would have been expected in this context are already incorporated in the respondents’ subjectively determined desired hours of work. In fact, further examinations confirm that ‘desired hours’ are associated with both socio-demographic characteristics (in particular, gender) and preferences for labor market work.     

Piece rates and workplace injury: Does survey evidence support Adam Smith?

While piece rates are routinely associated with higher productivity and wages, they can also generate unanticipated effects. Using cross-country European data, we provide among the first general survey evidence of a strong link between piece rates and workplace injury. Despite controls for workplace hazards, job characteristics and worker effort, piece rates workers suffer a 5 percentage point greater likelihood of injury. This remains despite attempts to control for endogeneity and heterogeneity. As piece rate wage premium estimates rarely control for injury likelihood, this raises the specter that part of that premium reflects a compensating wage differential for risk of injury.     

Age,Wage, and Job Placement: Older Women’s Experiences Entering the Retail Sector

Older women seeking employment often find opportunities limited to low-wage jobs, such as those in retail. We report findings about job placement and starting wages for hourly workers hired at a women’s apparel retailer from August 2006 to December 2009. We examine competing hypotheses regarding the role of age in explaining women’s job placement and starting wages. Although newly hired women age 55+ earn higher wages and are placed in higher-quality jobs than the youngest women (ages 18–22), they are less likely to be placed in better-quality jobs than their midlife counterparts. Overall, wage differences are largely explained by job quality.     

The More the Merrier? The Causal Effect of High Fertility on Later-Life Loneliness in Eastern Europe

Levels of later-life loneliness are high in Eastern Europe. We assess whether having more children is protective against later-life loneliness for Eastern-European mothers and fathers. Drawing on Generations and Gender Surveys data of 25,479 parents aged 50–80 from eight Eastern-European countries, we adopt an instrumental approach exploiting parents’ preference for mixed-sex offspring to estimate the causal effect of having additional children on feelings of loneliness. We find that having an additional child has a causal protective effect against loneliness for mothers. Ordinary least squares regression models also show a weak but statistically significant negative association between number of children and later-life loneliness among fathers. However, results of the instrumental variable analyses are inconclusive for this group. We thus do not find statistically significant causal evidence that having an additional child is protective against loneliness for fathers. Our results underline the importance of addressing reverse causality and selection bias when investigating the links between number of children and later-life loneliness, particularly among women. The causal evidence presented here suggests that the trend towards families with fewer children noted in several Eastern-European countries may place new cohorts of older Eastern-Europeans, and in particular Eastern-European women, at risk of stronger feelings of loneliness.

     

Are there asymmetries in the effects of training on the conditional male wage distribution?

Recent studies have used quantile regression (QR) techniques to estimate the impact of education on the location, scale and shape of the conditional wage distribution. We conduct a similar investigation of the role of work-related training. We utilise both ordinary least squares and QR techniques to estimate associations between work-related training and wages for private sector men in ten European Union countries. For the majority of countries, the association between training and hourly wages varies little across the conditional wage distribution. However, there are considerable differences across countries in mean associations between training and wages.     

European Identity: An Analysis of Measurement Equivalence Across Countries and Mode of Data Collection in the European Values Survey 2017/2018

The study of European Identity has gradually become central to social sciences in the past decades. The enlargement of the European Union, as well as the economic crises from a decade ago called into question the very idea of Europe as a polity, the legitimacy of the European project and the homogeneity of the European culture. Although many analyses study European Identity, most research focuses on the definition and measurement of European Identity within the EU member states. Due to the interest in European Identity within EU borders on the one hand, and the lack of comparable data on the other, the European Identity of all Europeans is rarely explored. To address this gap, we investigate the common understanding of Europeanness among those living in Europe. We define European Identity as ethnic/cultural identity as opposed to civic identity and analyse the measurement equivalence of the scale tapping European ethnic/cultural identity fielded by European Values Survey in 2017 in 30 European countries. The results point out to a common understanding of Europeanness among those living in Europe, in ethnic terms, not in cultural ones. Methodologically, the analyses proved that the scale is suitable for cross-national comparisons among countries, but the comparability should be refrained to comparing means of the scale across countries. The mode of data collection does not impact on the comparability of the scale in four of the six countries that used mixed modes of data collection.

     

The International Multidimensional Fertility Index: The European Case

We propose an index to measure the degree of ability or desire of the population in a given country to have children, via an analysis of certain factors that may have a positive or negative influence on the fertility rate of that country. Using data for the twenty-eight countries of the European Union, and Principal Components Analysis, we construct the International Multidimensional Fertility Index as a combination of four dimensions: (1) Economy and family, (2) Attitudes and habits, (3) Work–Life Balance, and (4) Policy, along with nineteen distinct variables. We find that Denmark, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg are among the countries with the highest value of the index, and they also have high fertility rates within the EU. At the other end of the spectrum, Latvia, Cyprus, and Greece, are ranked in the last positions according to our index, countries that also present low values in their fertility rates. We also find a positive correlation between the value of our index and country fertility rates, an indication that our index may be capturing country differences in the conditions for bearing children, with higher values of the index indicating better conditions for childbirth and childrearing. To the extent that international data becomes available, our methodology will allow for the construction of international rankings, helpful in identifying cross-country differences in the conditions for fertility.     

What Does Non-standard Employment Look Like in the United States? An Empirical Typology of Employment Quality

Despite significant interest in the changing nature of employment as a critical social and economic challenge facing society—especially the decline in the so-called Standard Employment Relationship (SER) and rise in more insecure, precarious forms of employment—scholars have struggled to operationalize the multifaceted and heterogeneous nature of contemporary worker-employer relationships within empirical analyses. Here we investigate the character and distribution of employment relationships in the U.S., drawing on a representative sample of wage-earners and self-employed from the General Social Survey (2002–2018). We use the multidimensional construct of employment quality, which includes both contractual (e.g., wages, contract type) and relational (e.g., employee representation and participation) aspects of employment. We further employ a typological measurement approach, using latent class analysis, to explicitly examine how the multiple aspects of employment cluster together in modern labor markets. We present eight distinct employment types in the U.S., including one resembling the historical conception of the SER model (24% of the total workforce), and others representing various constellations of favorable and adverse employment features. These employment types are unevenly distributed across society, in terms of who works these jobs and where they are found in the labor market. Importantly, women, those with lower education, and younger workers are more likely to be in precarious forms of employment. More generally, our typology reveals limitations associated with binary conceptions of standard vs. non-standard employment, or insider–outsider dichotomies envisioned within dual labor market theories.

     

Youth emancipation and perceived job insecurity of parents and children

We test whether job insecurity of parents and children affect children’s moving-out decisions. Macroeconomic estimates for 13 European countries over 1983–2004 show that coresidence increases by 1.7 percentage points (PP) following a 10 PP rise in the share of youths perceiving their job to be insecure and declines by 1.1 PP following the same increment in insecurity for older workers. Microeconometric evidence for Italy in the mid-1990s shows that the probability of moving out increases by about half a percentage point for a one-standard-deviation increase in paternal insecurity and by one-third of a percentage point for a one-standard-deviation decrease in children’s insecurity.     

Dynamics of precarity among ‘new migrants’: exploring the worker–capital relation through mobilities and mobility power

ABSTRACT

This article conceptualises the role of mobilities within precarious working and living conditions, drawing on qualitative analysis of interviews (n = 52) and a policy seminar (n = 50) in North-East England. It focuses on refugees, asylum seekers, and Eastern European EU migrants, as policy-constructed groups that have been identified as disproportionately concentrated in precarious work. The article develops three ‘dynamics of precarity’, defined as ‘surplus’, ‘rooted’, and ‘hyper-flexible’, to conceptualise distinct ways of moving that represent significant variations in the form that precarity takes. The article concludes that understanding precarity through mobilities can identify points of connection among today’s increasingly heterogeneous working class.     

A Task-Based Indicator for Labour Market Mismatch

This article uses a task-based approach to measure labour market mismatch and to study the wage effects of mismatch. We propose a new indicator—cognitive mismatch—and contrast it with the commonly used overqualification indicator. We argue that considering the tasks performed in each occupation captures more adequately the complexity of job requirements and tackles the major drawbacks of the existing approaches measuring mismatch. Using rich administrative data from the German Sample of Integrated Labour Market Biographies, we find that 4.8% of the total employment episodes are matched in terms of qualification but mismatched in terms of the tasks performed. Fixed Effects models show that the largest wage loss occurs in cases of mismatch in both education level and tasks performed at work. We conclude that each indicator is capturing different facets of mismatch and that they should be used complementarily in labour market mismatch analyses.

     

The increase in marital status differences in mortality up to the oldest age in seven European countries, 1990-99

We investigate mortality differentials by marital status among older age groups using a database of mortality rates by marital status at ages 40 and over for seven European countries with 1 billion person-years of exposure. The mortality advantage of married people, both men and women, continues to increase up to at least the age group 85-89, the oldest group we are able to consider. We find the largest absolute differences in mortality levels between marital status groups are at high ages, and that absolute differentials are: (i) greater for men than for women; (ii) similar in magnitude across countries; (iii) increase steadily with age; and (iv) are greatest at older age. We also find that the advantage enjoyed by married people increased over the 1990s in almost all cases. We note that results for groups such as older divorced women need to be interpreted with caution.     

Gates to retirement and gender differences: Macroeconomic conditions,job satisfaction,and age

ABSTRACT

The different pathways out of the labor force have been the focus of many recent studies, yet not enough scholarly attention has been paid to the effect of country-level, individual, and job characteristics and their potentially different influence across genders. The current article examines the relationships between retirement decisions and macroeconomic conditions, personal characteristics, and job satisfaction, while focusing on gender differences. Data came from 16,337 respondents in 13 European countries that participated in the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). We find that the relative importance of macroeconomic conditions and job satisfaction differs by gender.